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Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Since Terry travels so much he looked at all of his hotel points and realized that he had a ton and turned them all in to Amazon.com gift cards. So with that money we ended up getting some new bedding to match the new Purple Dragon room ;) Now we just need to get something up on the walls. Especially the wall behind the bed. Have not decided what will go there...but when we do we will let you know. Anyone have any ideas for us?

So Terry's wonderful cousin Amy gave us some items for the house she no longer needed. They were awesome but gold in color and didn't match our decor. So we grabbed one of our favorite go to products called Rustoleum All Surface Spray Paint in High Gloss Black. First we cleaned all of the items with a product called TSP and let it dry. We have been using this product on the walls, doors and molding to help get all the years of dust, dirt and grime off. It really works well and is a pretty easy step. Anyways, after we cleaned we applied a couple coats of the Rustoleum. I don't have photos of all the stuff we spray painted but here are a few. We got the candelabra in the below photo. The previous homeowner left the fireplace screen and tools and then their is the before and after of the mirror we recieved. What do you think?

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Just finished up another project on our checklist. Ever since I was a little girl my favorite color was purple. I have always wanted to have a purple bedroom and now that we have a house it was time to make that dream a reality! It took a lot of convincing to get Terry to agree having a purple bedroom....BUT when I finally did pick out the paint color and told him it was called "Purple Dragon" he was on board because it sounded a bit more manly! I will admit while we were putting it on we started to get a bit concerned because it was looking a little like I love Barny-ish. Since we had the green Frog Tape on all the molding but after it dried and we took off all the tape and added everything back into the room we absolutely loved it. Even Terry! Just love how the black furniture, white molding and doors look with the lavender. We are extremely pleased with this transformation.

The next thing we need to do is eventually purchase new bedding and add a few more photos to the walls and we will be all set.

Here are the before and after shots.

We also got the approval of old Jo. He jumped right on the bed as soon as we were finished setting it up and proceeded sleep there the remainder of the evening :)

Monday, November 28, 2011

In the same Thanksgiving weekend we moved into the master bedroom...since the paint was taking forever to dry in the bathroom. Again... we have lots of wood that needed to be painted white. We decided to change primers for this round to an oil based paint. Things went much smoother and the paint dried SO much faster. The coverage was thicker we did 2 quick coats and put on the final coat on in the same evening. It was all dried and ready to go in the morning on Sunday.

Here is our bedroom before. With lots of wood. UGLY gold ceiling fan and hideous window coverings (even though they did block out the light)

Here are the after photos of the windows, closet doors and molding.

We also purchased a new ceiling fan as well as new window blinds. We opted for the faux wood ones...look just as good as the real ones and half the price!

We still have the other side of the closet doors to paint this evening then we will start to paint the bedroom walls. I convinced Terry that we should have a lavender bedroom. Purchased the paint for that last night and will be doing that this week/weekend. Then we will add our bed and furniture back into our bedroom (sleeping in the guest bedroom now). More photo transformations to come :)

I have been asked what primer and paint we used for these projects. See below. We purchased both of these products at Ace Hardware. I believe they were around $20 something for each gallon of paint. We have painted the bathroom and bedroom molding, cabinets and doors and still have about 1/4 of it left in each. So it goes a long way.

Our house has lots of dark wood. EVERYWHERE! I cant stand it and we have officially started the transformation process of painting it all and making it look more modern. We decided to start at the far end of our house in the bathroom/bedroom over Thanksgiving weekend.

Since its all colored dark wood. It of course has all gold colored hinges, knobs, fixtures etc. Like our bathroom light here.

Since we just purchased the house and are on a major budget. We decided to save additional money and spray paint all of the gold old hinges. A can of $5 spray paint...or goodness knows how much in hardware. The decision was easy for us :)

We used the Kilz Original Primer when we first started....do NOT recommend this....since we had to do 3-4 coats of this stuff. Then for the final paint we opted to go for the Ace brand of super hard drying cabinet & trim paint- it has this nifty hardening stuff in it called "Alkatex"....mind you it takes FOREVER to dry...ideal temp is 80 degrees with low humidity...not happening in November in Seattle. Since it was still tacky after about 30 hours! We grabbed our space heaters and dehumidifier and closed off the bedroom. It helped a lot by drying it over night.

So on Sunday afternoon...we were finally able to put everything back together. We did end up purchasing little silver knobs from Ace since they were a smoking deal. We learned a lot on this project on what products and techniques work better than others.

Here is what the final product looks like. Its hard to see the light bar but we think the light looks a lot better in white and silver than wood and gold.

We have a few drip spots that dried up on us but overall Terry and I are very happy with the new look of our bathroom cabinets.

Here are the before and after photos...what do you think? You think we made the right choice here in painting? We sure do!

Monday, November 14, 2011

The sale of our new house closed on October 14, 2011. We spend almost most every day after work filling up our cars and driving over to the new place and unpacking what we could. I did most of the moving on my own while Terry studied for his PE exam that was coming up on the 28th of October.

The cats helped out a lot by jumping into every box I got out to pack up! They had the best time romping through all the mess and driving us nutzo!

The day after Terry took his exam we jumped on the plane and went to Maui for a week with our cousins James and Leslie. We all had a glorious time together enjoying the warm weather.

We got back into Seattle around 2am on Saturday morning! We got a wink of sleep & got up around 5am to pack up the cats drive them over to the new house so they would be out of the way while we got our final big stuff out of our condo. It was a long day but things went fairly quickly thanks to the help of some awesome friends (Alex and Nick) and so did the unpacking because most of it was already done from all the work we had done the weeks before. Probably one of the longest but most easiest moves I have ever done. Now we are looking forward to lots of space and tons of DIY projects!

About us

We are a 30 something married couple who recently purchased our first "real" home! We have gone from condo life to having lots of space and are just loving every second of it! We love home improvement projects and are always working on something in and around our home. Our goal in creating this blog will hopefully give some of you some great ideas and tips for your homes as well as keep our family and friends from far way on the up and up of what all we are accomplishing!